Ryan Dempster pitched for 16 years in Major League Baseball. He is the co-host of MLB Network\u2019s \u201cIntentional Talk.\u201d These are the three best leaders he played with in his career.<\/p>\n
Greg Maddux, Chicago Cubs pitcher<\/p>\n
In my first year with the Cubs in 2004, we lost the second-to-last game of the season and were eliminated from the playoffs. Greg was supposed to start the next day, and I remember our manager, Dusty Baker, coming down to him in the locker room: \u201cDo you still want to start tomorrow?\u201d<\/p>\n
Greg looked at him and said, \u201cDamn right I do.\u201d<\/p>\n
I asked Greg later about what was so important about that last start. He told me, \u201cTo start the last day of the season is just as important as starting the first game of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s all he said, and I never asked him why he said that. I just thought about it a lot, and I think that summed him up.<\/p>\n
He led by example better than anyone I\u2019ve been around. I just watched him. I watched how he went about his business and prepared.<\/p>\n
I learned a lot about routine from him. Greg understood the different ways the smallest edge could help you win a game. He was always looking for that edge like a master card player: If he found a tell, he would exploit it to his advantage like no other.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s funny because I was a weight-room guru. I loved being in there, I loved working out. That wasn\u2019t necessarily Greg\u2019s strong point. But every single day at 6 a.m. in spring training, he\u2019d be on the Precor machine getting his cardio in.<\/p>\n
I learned a lot about accountability. I saw him do things that I\u2019d never seen before. I watched him walk into the training room after giving up three runs in the first inning and tell our team doctor where to stick the Marcaine or novocaine or whatever he had shot in his arm to numb it.<\/p>\n
Think about that. He walked into the training room, pointed to his shoulder and said, \u201cRight here, doc.\u201d And then he went out and threw six shutout innings after giving up three runs in the first.<\/p>\n
I was like, Who is this guy? I\u2019m not going to ever complain again if I don\u2019t feel that great.<\/p>\n
I learned how to be a better teammate. A guy comes in after scoring a run, who was one of the first people there to give him a high five? Greg Maddux. Starting pitchers disappear all the time during games. But he was always in the dugout, except for the day before his start, and that\u2019s only because he was inside charting pitches.<\/p>\n
It made me go, Man, I could be a better teammate because of the way this guy is.<\/p>\n
The numbers don\u2019t lie. Look at my career ERA before playing with Maddux (5.01) and after playing with him (3.90). He helped me that much.<\/p>\n
Mark DeRosa, Chicago Cubs infielder<\/p>\n
He had the ability to connect a locker room.<\/p>\n
It was as important to him to be connected to the superstar on the team as it was to be connected with the 25th guy on the roster. He wanted to make sure that everybody was pulling on the same rope.<\/p>\n
He also had an innate ability to poke the guys who needed to be poked, to coddle the guys who needed to be coddled and to press the guys who needed a little more at their backs.<\/p>\n
He held people accountable: \u201cHey, dude, run down to first base today. I don\u2019t care if you go 0 for 4, I need you to run down to first base every time.\u201d He was not afraid to have those uncomfortable conversations as a teammate, and that\u2019s not easy.<\/p>\n
There was a brief stretch in 2008 when we had a guy who just wasn\u2019t very interested in taking batting practice on the field. We were kind of struggling. It was Aramis Ramirez, and Mark went up to him and said, \u201cHey Rammy, we need you out there. I need you there. I need you hitting in my group.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sure enough, Rammy was out there hitting.<\/p>\n
Mark knew when to call for a team dinner, a card game or a group hang in a room. He could read what the team needed as well as anyone I ever played with. And if you look at those two years in Chicago, we won back-to-back division titles. Mark played a vital role in that.<\/p>\n
We all get caught up in our roles. I\u2019m a third baseman. I\u2019m a second baseman. I\u2019m a starting pitcher.<\/p>\n
For him, it was: I just want to win. If that means I play right field, second base, shortstop, I don\u2019t care. I believe I can be an everyday player at one of those positions, but I\u2019m not here to complain about that.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re around that, you start to put your team first instead of your individual goals. It\u2019s contagious.<\/p>\n
Dustin Pedroia, Boston Red Sox second baseman<\/p>\n
No player in my big-league career was more prepared than Dustin Pedroia. I\u2019m not going to say he was the most prepared because I don\u2019t want to disrespect anybody who put everything they had into it, but there wasn\u2019t\u00a0a\u00a0more prepared player.<\/p>\n
He left nothing to chance.<\/p>\n
You show up to the ballpark at noon, and he\u2019s already taken 50 groundballs. You want to come early and hit? He\u2019s already down at the batting cage.<\/p>\n
When the best player on your team is setting the biggest example, it\u2019s hard for everybody else not to fall in line.<\/p>\n
I love David Ortiz, but he could be watching an episode of \u201cFamily Matters\u201d between innings and then go out and hit a three-run home run. That was a different kind of confidence, and it wasn\u2019t always necessarily what you wanted young guys to look to. They just saw the result; they didn\u2019t see all the work David put into the cage.<\/p>\n
With Dustin, you saw it. You saw the accountability. He left nothing to chance. He never took a pitch off.<\/p>\n
This is an incredible Pedroia story. We were in New York to play the Yankees, and it was a 7:05 p.m. start.<\/p>\n
Pedey was in full uniform at 6:05. He was in the locker room, eating his Little League pregame meal. I think it was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a ham and cheese sandwich with Doritos and an Orange Crush \u2014 total 12-year-old meal.<\/p>\n
We were all wearing him out. It was myself, Clay Buchholz, Jon Lester, John Lackey and David Ross. We were like, \u201cBro, are we doing baseball card pictures today?\u201d<\/p>\n
He was sitting there, eating his sandwich, not paying attention to us.<\/p>\n
So then we were like, \u201cOh, wait, wait, wait. I know. You and your wife are doing your Christmas cards today. Is that why you\u2019re in your full uni?\u201d<\/p>\n
We were burying him. He didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
He finished his sandwich and chips and went over to the trash can, took a final sip of his soda \u2014 I\u2019ll never forget this \u2014 and he looked at all of us and went real loud and stern, \u201cHey guys. If the f\u2014ing game starts right now, you know who\u2019s batting leadoff? Me. Because I\u2019m ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was like, \u201cI LOVE YOU, DUDE. YOU\u2019RE THE MAN!\u201d We were all like that: \u201cWE LOVE YOU, BRO!\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s an MVP, a Rookie of the Year, a World Series Champion, an All-Star and a should-be Hall of Famer putting that in your head. Like, you better get your s\u2013t together. You\u2019d better be ready.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve told that story to so many people because the leaders are the ones who have no pressure because they\u2019ve prepared harder than anybody in the game. They are more ready than anybody. And that story right there is why Dustin Pedroia did everything he did on a baseball field.<\/p>\n
\u2014 As told to Jayson Jenks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Dempster pitched for 16 years in Major League Baseball. He is the co-host of MLB Network\u2019s \u201cIntentional…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[3959,49,48,508,3983,3981,462,15885,82,575,148306],"class_list":["post-631819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-miami-marlins","tag-mlb","tag-peak","tag-sports","tag-sports-business","tag-world-baseball-classic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}